A God, Fearing
by Ainikki
Summary: Post-God Fearing Child. Stunned by the realization that he loves Xena, Ares decides to find out why by talking to his son, Cupid, and Aphrodite. Ares/Xena.


Summary: Post- _God Fearing Child_. Stunned by the realization that he loves Xena, Ares decides to find out why by talking to his son, Cupid.

Author's Note: Lots of talking, not much action. Sorry about that, but this got in my head and wouldn't go away. If Ares' sister (and son, in mythology anyway) are embodiments of love, why wouldn't they be involved with Ares' transformation by it?

A God, Fearing

 _I love you, Xena._

Had Ares really said those words? Had he meant them? He didn't know. Then why say them? Because he couldn't say anything else? Certainly not because they were true.

As Ares stood still in Tartarus with the red walls glowing eerily around him, he thought that his words must be the result of residual guilt for not interfering when Caesar had ordered Xena killed. That had been a shitty move that Caesar had paid handsomely for.

Yes, that must be it. Mortals mistook guilt and love all the time.

But it didn't feel like guilt.

It felt like a keening wail coming from far away that he had to answer, but couldn't. It felt like adoration and worship-two familiar feelings-mixed with bitterness and bile. It felt sincere, and it hurt.

The hurt was there; he felt it in the place where he should have felt the death of his parents-Zeus and Hera. Hercules-and Xena, too-had brought about their end, but he didn't feel that they were gone, somehow. That pain was tied up with what Ares had said and done before he felt their deaths. He had spent centuries beyond count despising his father and craving scraps of attention from his mother. He would never see them again, and he didn't care.

Xena was safe. That brought him a sense of acrid relief. He wanted to laugh. He wanted not to cry, not to break down in weakness. He wanted to kill a lot of people. He didn't know what he wanted.

There was only one logical explanation for this confusion of emotions. If he was feeling something that he'd confused with love, then the god of love was probably behind it. In an instant of decision, he moved through the aether to visit his son.

Ares materialized just outside of the Halls of Love on Olympus. He had learned to knock after catching Cupid in any number of compromising (and some slightly embarrassing) situations.

As he entered the temple, he caught the tang of perfumed bath oils and incense. Cupid liked keeping his place and his servants clean. Ares sniffed a little in distaste and called out, with more force than he intended, "Cupid!"

In the hall before him, a flash of white and a puff of feathers announced Cupid's arrival. "Yo, dad," Cupid said. "What's up?"

Ares sneered. "You know why I'm here."

"No, I honestly don't." Cupid pulled a feather out of one of his wings with a wince. "I swear I get more ingrown feathers every week." He walked over to an open box of arrows and started inspecting the weapons.

Ares folded his arms over his chest as Cupid turned away from him. "As fascinating as your grooming problems are, I'd rather we talk about what you've done to me."

Cupid snorted and closed the lid on his box of arrows. Facing Ares again, he said, "Me? I've done nothing to you…not recently, anyway."

Ares cocked his head slightly to one side and realized he was mirroring his son's confused body language. "What do you mean?"

Cupid's mouth quirked up at the edges. "I mean, I assume you're here about Xena, and I didn't need to do much to make Xena attracted to you…or the other way around, either." He smirked. "I mean, have you looked at yourself recently? Any woman with a functioning sex drive would want you. And maybe half the men, too."

Ares sneered at him again. "That's not what I'm asking, and you know it. Love and sex aren't the same thing."

"Exactly." Cupid nodded. "So what are you talking to the god of passion and sex for, then? You want mom. She's your problem, not me."

'Dite. He hadn't spoken to her in a long time. No reason to, really. The last time they'd been stuck together was when her scroll had made them both mortal for a day, and neither one of them wanted to rehash that experience much.

"Maybe you're right," Ares said.

Cupid grinned. "I'm always right."

Ares vanished before he finished his sentence.

Too impatient to give Aphrodite fair warning, Ares appeared right in the middle of the Halls of Love, just before Aphrodite's main hall. Aphrodite herself sat lounging on her throne, legs tossed carelessly over one of the chair arms. A scroll lay open on her lap; Aphrodite's face pressed close to it. Ares noticed the outline of her horn-rimmed glasses and coughed.

Stunned, Aphrodite sat up and looked at him, making the glasses vanish at once. "Hi, Ar. What's goin' on?"

"You haven't heard?"

"About what? Zeus and Hera going kaput?" She paused for a moment. "Major bummer. Mom's overjoyed. Mine, not yours, obviously."

Ares winced a bit. "You visited Dione in Tartarus?"

Aphrodite rolled up her scroll and fixed an intense stare on Ares. "Yeah. Well, dad's dead, Ar. I just…wanted someone there. Someone standing between me and this whole…death thing." As she spoke, her eyes misted slightly. "Ar, we're going to die."

"Not necessarily. After all, Xena and Gabrielle both like you."

"They like you, too. Xena, anyway."

A big fat opening if he ever saw one. "Yeah, about that."

Aphrodite waited for him to expand more. When he didn't, she prompted, "Yes?"

"I want to know what you've done between Xena and, um, me."

"Me? I haven't done anything. Not lately, I mean…"

Great, a repeat of his earlier conversation with Cupid. Aphrodite was still babbling about what she hadn't done when Ares cut in, "Stop. I-did things today I wasn't proud of. Said things I can't take back. And…" His throat closed. "I know you must be behind it."

Aphrodite's expression clouded over in confusion for a moment-but only a moment. Then she gave him a catlike smile. "Ar, you've been in love with Xena for a while now. Just say it. You'll feel better."

"No, I will not!" Ares blurted out before realizing that he sounded like a petulant child. "Or maybe I do." He paused. "I don't know. It's not something I can control."

"Of course not. Love can't be controlled. Remember when daddy tried, when I was little and we..." Thinking of Zeus made her trail off. She cleared her throat. "Like I said, you've been in love for a long time. You're realizing it now, is all. Isn't that just _profound_?"

"Not really, sis," he muttered. "So…now what?"

Aphrodite cocked her head to the side. "Now what? Now you get to enjoy love, the way mortals do."

"Can't you just…take it away? Make me not love her anymore?"

Aphrodite sighed. "Ar, I like you. Truly. You're my favorite relative." She smiled. "Aside from my children. And if there was anything I could do, I would do it. But…do you remember when Bliss stole Cupid's arrows of infatuation?"

"Yes." Ares vaguely remembered a chaotic day and a half of Cupid frantically searching for his brat with wings.

"Well, one of them hit Gabrielle, and she fell in love with Joxer-you know, Xena's other sidekick?"

"The one that sings the annoying song about himself?"

"Yep. The thing is, when Cupid tried to take the spell off of them, it wouldn't work on Joxer, because he was actually in love. Infatuation-sex-they're _much_ less complicated than love. I may be the love goddess, but even I don't have total control. Zeus-when he was around-couldn't control all the lightning, and I can't control all the love. I channel it and direct it, but I couldn't direct it _away_ from you if I tried. That ship's already sailed."

A distinct pause as Ares considered a response. "So what do I do? How can I make this…stop? Or at least get better?"

Aphrodite smiled tightly. "Love hurts, huh? Well, you could find out if she loves you. That'd be my first question."  
"You're the love goddess…can't you tell if a mortal's in love with someone?"

Aphrodite's smile collapsed a bit. "Yes, but that won't help you."

"Why not?"

Aphrodite's eyes moved toward the scroll she had closed. "Ar, I already told you, I don't control all the love. What I know and sense might not be all there is. And," she said, "you're forgetting what I already told you."

"What's that?"

"Love's not about control."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if Xena doesn't love you, there's no way to force her to. You can't make someone love you."

"Then how-?"

Aphrodite opened her scroll and stifled a yawn. "Try listening. Try caring." Her eyes fixed his for a moment. "And go grieve daddy properly."

Ares stood there for a moment, perplexed at Aphrodite's dismissal. Tentatively, he asked, "Where's Hephaestus?"

Without looking up from her scroll, Aphrodite said, "Freaking out over Hera. He was driving me crazy, so I told him to go make something. It seems to be helping him cope."

"So, this," Ares said, gesturing to Aphrodite's scroll, "is you grieving?"

Aphrodite frowned. "No." She rested the scroll in her lap for a moment and looked up, though her gaze didn't focus on anything. "I...can't, somehow. It's too new. I don't know what it means yet. Love is still in the world." She flicked a glance at Ares. "So is war. Have you felt anything...different, with them gone?"

Ares thought a moment. The last few times he'd become mortal, the people he'd been around displayed major differences in behavior and personality. Lacking discipline and focus, they'd turned on one another on a whim. That didn't seem to be happening on earth. Slowly, reluctantly, Ares answered, "No. It's almost like no one realizes they're gone."

"Exactly. It's...almost like they're not. Like, maybe they're just lost, and if we only looked in the right place, we'd find them. Even though I know that's not right, I can't shake the feeling that their death-if it's real-should have changed something. Everything."

Ares nodded. As Zeus' eldest and only legitimate son, he'd always believed he would one day strike down Zeus, as Zeus had struck down his father Cronus...and as Cronus had struck down his father before that. It was in the nature of eldest sons to do such things, but Hercules had beaten him to the punch. "Hasn't it?" Ares asked Aphrodite. "Changed everything, I mean?"

"No. I think that's why I'm having such a hard time feeling it."

He wondered if anyone would miss him when he was dead. 'Dite, maybe. What if she died, too?

For the briefest of moments, Eli's face crossed his memory. He should have killed the meddler before he and his god became such a nuisance.

"I'll leave you alone," Ares said. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Talking. Explaining. It helped."

Aphrodite beamed. "Good. Let me know if you need anything."

After what felt like the ordeal of the century, Ares finally returned to the Halls of War. For a moment he caught himself looking for Strife, but then remembered that he'd been lost, too.

So many immortals, dead.

Ares walked over to one of the thin arrow-slit windows in his own great hall, thinking. Neither Cupid nor Aphrodite were responsible for his words or actions that day. That left only one possibility. Looking up at the dim night sky through the window, Ares said softly, "So, God of Love and Light. Wanna talk?"

No response. Typical.

"So no one's listening." That had been his suspicion for a long time.

Aphrodite and Cupid hadn't done this to him. It was a fair bet this other god hadn't, either. Perhaps there was power in things that couldn't be controlled; power in love. He'd never tried it; he didn't know. Even if love couldn't be controlled, it was, in some ways, a choice-in its expression if not its feeling. He could choose where he went from here.

His parents were dead, and he loved Xena. The whole world had balled up and was unfurling again, new with possibilities. As Ares settled on his throne, he opened a portal on Xena, Eve and Gabrielle.

He watched over them for a long time.

THE END

Disclaimer: Ares' understanding of love was slightly improved during the production of this motion picture. Aphrodite has been gloating for days.


End file.
